Previously, the only good thing about being in hospital, apart from staying in bed all day, was the freedom from mobile phones. Not any more. This week, the Department of Health said that NHS trusts should allow "the widest possible use" of mobile phones in hospitals. There is evidence that electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobiles can interfere with some electronic medical equipment, resulting in anything from a juddering screen to displaying incorrect figures to even switching off; and hospitals will still forbid the use of phones in wards with life-saving equipment, possibly soon to be the last public refuge from annoying ringtones.

Even airlines are starting to introduce hardware that allows the safe use of mobiles at altitudes of more than 3,000m, the "cruise" phase of a flight (mobiles are still thought to pose an interference risk with flight navigation and communication systems during take-off and landing). The use of a mobile phone has never been proved to be responsible for the crash of any large passenger plane, but according to the Civil Aviation Authority mobiles were linked to around 20 incidents of aircraft malfunction between 2000 and 2005.

Mobile phones are still banned from petrol station forecourts, for fear that the battery could produce an incendiary spark, but Adam Burgess, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Kent and author of Cellular Phones, Public Fears and a Culture of Precaution, says that the forecourt fires previously blamed on mobile phones are now believed to have been caused by body static. "We live in a more anxious society than ever, where we assume there is danger everywhere," he says. With the previous ban on mobiles in hospitals, Burgess points out, "there has been a financial motive in keeping charges for the fixed line hospital phones rolling into Trust coffers".

All this isn't to say that mobile phones are definitively safe - there are still questions about the effects of radiation from phones on health. But if we do all have to go into hospital to have lesions on our brains removed, at least we will be able to use our phones.